Appeals Court Reinstates Saudi Arabia as Defendant in 9/11 Case

A view from Brooklyn of New York City and the ‘Tribute In Light’ marking the twelfth anniversary of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2013 in New York City.

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Back in 2003, a group of alleged victims of the 9/11 attacks sued the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, claiming it provided significant support to al-Qaeda in advance of the terrorist acts.

A full decade later, thanks to a ruling Thursday by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, plaintiffs have won the right to pursue the suit.

If you’re not already familiar with the lawsuit, there’s no use reading the opinion, which is about as complicated a 16-page ruling we’ve ever read. (Really, masochists, go ahead and try.)

Essentially, the court said that restoring Saudi Arabia as a defendant was necessary to be consistent with a ruling by a different 2nd Circuit panel that allowed another lawsuit to go forward. In that suit, a man sued Afghanistan, among others, for the death of his wife on 9/11.

The 2nd Circuit and a lower court had previously ruled that Saudi Arabia was protected by sovereign immunity. . . . But in its latest ruling, the 2nd Circuit said a legal exception existed that would allow Saudi Arabia to remain as a defendant, just as Afghanistan remained in the similar case.

“The procedural history of this case produced inconsistent results between two sets of plaintiffs suing for damages based on the same incident,” the appeals court said in a decision written by Circuit Judge Chester J. Straub. “We conclude that the circumstances here are ‘extraordinary’ and warrant relief.”

An attorney representing Saudi Arabia, Kellogg Huber’s Michael Kellogg, told the AP that the panel’s decision is “contrary to settled law” and will only result in a lower court throwing the case out for other reasons.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Stephen Cozen of Cozen O’Connor, told the LB that the panel’s ruling was “eminently correct” and should “give these victims the day in court they’ve been waiting for.”

Lawyers in the Sept. 11 lawsuits have frequently cited the report by the Sept. 11 Commission, as support for their argument that Saudi Arabia had long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding. Lawyers for Saudi Arabia, however, have argued that the commission found no evidence that either the Saudi government or Saudi officials individually funded al Qaeda.

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